My custodianship of the Bitmob Spotlight continues while Demian Linn reports from Gamescom Cologne, Germany. This week's edition brings a mix of the serious, the funny, and the fanboy.
Check the links to read a community member's new roundtable feature, a stick-figure commentary on game development, bringing a little poetry to gaming, Japanese mechs, little girls and wolves, and wrestling with muscle memories.
Insert Three Coins: Issue No. 1
By Omar Yusuf
It's Coffee Talk for the Bitmob community. OK, so it doesn't have any yentas, but it is a roundtable feature. Omar grabs the thoughts of three members of the Bitmob community on a gaming-related topic. This week, Brett Bates, Andrew Hiscock, and Omar discuss the gaming moment that changed their perspectives on the hobby. Also, if you're interested in taking part in Insert Three Coins, e-mail Omar at omar.a.yusuf at gmail.com.
Design Doc-aholic
By Mike Minotti
Mike aims his minimalist artistic take on gaming at design docs, skewering popular (and cliché) genres with a postmortem platformer starring Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the most massive zombie apocalypse ever conceived, and mixing the building blocks of life with Space Invaders. I'd play these games!
Experience: Don't Look Back
By Finn Haverkamp
Finn views Don't Look Back as gaming poetry. Like many poems, the title gives you a hint about what's in store, from themes to gameplay. Don't Look Back, he argues, transcends the normal game debate -- is it fun? -- by making us think about how we feel about it.
Ideas for a Robotech Game
By Rob Savillo
Ah, Robotech. It's the second-favorite anime of my youth (Space Battleship Yamato, known as Star Blazers in the U.S., is my No. 1 anime). It's one of Rob's favs as well. He takes a look at the missed opportunities of previous Robotech games and then discusses what he'd like in a game based on this iconic Japanese franchise. Oddly enough, it sounds like X-COM with a Robotech skin.
Veering from the Path
By Davneet Minhas
Six Little Red Riding Hoods meet their wolves in The Path, an interactive, nonlinear tale. The player knows that they should avoid each wolf. But as the wolves represent danger and desire, says Davneet, they also prove too irresistible to resist.
Fighting Against Muscle Memory
By Alex R. Cronk-Young
Alex may have been an obsessive Star Fox 64 player, but no matter how ingrained the game became in his very being, he still couldn't get every medal. Five years later, he gets the troublesome medals on his first try. He wonders if muscle memory is friend or foe when it comes to gaming.
